Chest
Clinical InvestigationsTrends in Physician-Diagnosed Asthma Prevalence in Manitoba between 1980 and 1990
Section snippets
METHODS AND MATERIALS
The provincial Health Insurance Plan is administered by the Manitoba Health Services Commission (MHSC) that also maintains a registry of the total population of Manitoba classified by age and sex. Virtually all health services used by approximately 1,100,000 Manitobans both within and outside the province are recorded and paid for by the MHSC. Physicians' claims for payment indicate the reason for using health services, ie, the diagnoses. A single diagnosis is recorded on each physician claim
RESULTS
Table 1 shows that, in Manitoba, the number of people seen and treated for asthma approximately doubled during the 1980s. In 1989, 14,281 male subjects and 14,497 female subjects (256 and 254 per 10,000, respectively), were seen for asthma in comparison with 7,659 male subjects (140 per 10,000) and 6,899 female subjects (125 per 10,000) in 1980. The age distribution was bimodal for both sexes. The highest age-specific physician-diagnosed prevalence was found for male children 5 to 9 years old.
DISCUSSION
Data reported in this study clearly show that the prevalence of physician-diagnosed asthma increased in Manitoba during the 1980s for all age groups and both sexes. These increases varied with age and were the highest in children. There were significant differences between the two sexes: increases were greater in male children and female adults.
Our results are consistent with the prevalence of physician-diagnosed asthma in children in the United States,14 who showed similar prevalence increases
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We thank Manitoba Health Services Commission for permission to use their data and advice during the preparation of this report.
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Supported by a grant from MRC Canada, the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a Career Scientist Award (No. 6607–1314–48) from Health and Welfare, Canada, to Dr. L. L. Roos.
Manuscript received January 27; revision accepted Mar 8.